Telephone companies have "roll-over" or hunting feature they offer to subscribers having two or more telephone lines. This service utilizes a conventional hunting feature available in the telephone company's central office (CO) switch to automatically process incoming calls from a subscriber's published line to an available line in the subscriber's system if the subscriber's published line is busy. Some telephone companies charge a monthly rate of as much as twenty to thirty five dollars for this service.
Telephone companies also have a "call pickup" feature they offer to subscribers having two or more telephone lines. The call pickup feature also utilizes the telephone switching system installed in the telephone company's central office, but the processing of incoming calls from a subscriber's published line to an available line in the subscriber's system is not automatic. In practice, a subscriber having the call pickup feature and hearing the published line (line 1) ringing can transfer or pickup the call on another line (line 2) in the subscriber's system by manually dialing *8 on line 2. The manual dialing of *8 activates the call pickup feature in the telephone switch in the CO which then processes the ringing call from the subscribers's line 1 to line 2.
The typical charge by a telephone company for call pickup service is one dollar each month. This cost is much less than what some of the telephone companies charge for the automatic rollover feature, but the inexpensive call pickup feature conventionally offered by telephone companies requires the subscriber to manually dial *8. That is much less convenient for the subscriber than the automatic, but sometimes expensive, rollover service.